This is the week of my son's birthday, and there have been a rash of new births among my friends and their children. So my mind turns to thoughts of labor and delivery, but also to labor in general. What's the hardest work experience you've ever had? What role does hard work play in your family history? What's particularly hard about your work right now? If you've given birth, what was that experience like for you?

Since I first learned how to tap the keys on an old Remington manual typewriter, I’ve loved to write. It’s how I make sense of life in general and my own in particular. It’s how I understand myself and the world around me. “The good writer,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the universe which runs through himself and all things.” As I write about my own life and share my own stories, I hope you recognize that thread of similarity running between my universe and yours.